[caption id="attachment_12656" align="alignright" width="215" caption="Click here to view an historic slideshow presentation from an execution in Georgetown during the 1920s.WARNING: Contains some graphic images."]
The first reported execution in Delaware was by hanging in 1662, more than a century before Delaware became a state.
Records are sketchy about the application of the death penalty before 1902, but it is believed that there were seven executions in the state between 1831 and 1902.
From 1902 to 1946, 25 people were executed by hanging. All were male except for one: May H. Carey was hanged in 1935 for murder. She is one of three women to have ever been executed in Delaware.
After several legislative attempts to abolish the death penalty in the 1950s, a bill was passed in 1957 and signed by Governor J. Caleb Boggs, making Delaware, at that time, the second state to abolish the death penalty.
The death penalty was restored in 1961 when lawmakers overrode a veto from Governor Elbert Carvel to enact a bill to reestablish it.
Lethal injection became the method of execution under a law enacted in June 1986. At that time, the state purchased a mobile execution chamber and maintained it for that purpose. Condemned inmates who were sentenced before that law took effect had the choice of death by lethal injection or by hanging.
In 1992, convicted serial killer Steven Pennell became the first person executed in Delaware since 1946. Prior to Pennell's execution by lethal injection, the state's lethal injection chamber was renovated to stay in compliance with updated Department of Correction
In 1994, Governor Thomas Carper signed a bill to restrict the hours of execution to between 12:01 a.m. and 3:00 a.m. on the execution date.
In 1996, Delaware carried out its first hanging in about 50 years when Billy Bailey went to the gallows after choosing hanging as the method of his execution. The gallows were dismantled seven years later when the death row inmate eligible for hanging was was granted a new trial and received a life sentence. The gallows were dismantled in such a way as to make souvenir collecting impossible, according to the Department of Correction.
In 2000, the execution chamber now in use at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna was constructed.
There are currently 19 men on Delaware’s death row.
Source: Delaware Department of Correction
